It was a dark and foggy summer night. Biff the Wonder Spaniel and I set out for our last neighborhood
stroll, green poopy bag at the ready. It's a good thing I didn't have my nose buried in my iPhone,
catching up on the four games of Words With Friends that Lin and I usually have going. If I had been
distracted, I'd probably be sporting stitches, or worse yet, a ripped cornea.

Through the mist, I realized I was one step away from facial lacerations from a thorny rose branch
arching across the sidewalk at eye level. That's what can happen when someone plants a Cecile Brunner
climbing rose on a picket fence that butts up against the sidewalk.

Seems to me, you'd have to be either stupid or heartless to think you can plant a 25-foot climber a
couple of inches from your property line, then neglect pruning it. Good thing poison oak isn't a popular
garden plant.

Thorny plants are the worst-case scenario, but it seems everywhere I look, somebody's fuzzy bush is in
my face. I've got no beef with someone planting this stuff along their own walkways, but when half of a
public sidewalk is blocked by some thoughtless, lazy gardener's weekend project, I get pissed off.

One block from my house in the opposite direction, there's a wall of ivy climbing something (it's so
dense I have no idea if it's an old chain link fence or remnants of an ancient civilization) and taking up
more than half the sidewalk. Up on Los Olivos, between De la Vina and Chapala, crimson bougainvillea
sporting inch-long spiky thorns spills out from a raised wall. Pretty? Yes. Neighborly? Hardly. Legal? No
way. Arrogant and lazy? In the words of Sarah Palin, you betcha.

Assuming that the owners of these properties are aware that their plants are blocking public right of
way, I can only assume that they rationalize it by thinking "I can get past, so why ruin my weekend
doing chores?"

What about a mom with a stroller? What about someone like my dad who uses a walker and is legally
blind?

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Here's a two-for-one special: Brazilian skyflower in the parkway (some varieties reach 20-feet high and
wide) and rosemary creeping in from the garden. Great for an Olympic slalom course, but maybe a bit
much for someone with mobility problems.

Two blocks away, on De la Vina, where I'm sure curbside parking is at a premium, some numbnut who
won't clean out their garage left their big fat tail end blocking the walk. All that's missing is a middle-
finger decal over the wheel.

Bonnie Elliott is a friend who spends much of her waking days in a power wheel chair. She's also been
active on the City of Santa Barbara's Access Advisory Committee, reviewing submittals that go through
the Planning Commission and making recommendations to make new projects safer and more livable
for a wider cross-section of the community.

"That overgrown crap shouldn't be there," Bonnie told me, as we sipped ice teas and devoured divine
pistachio macarons on a warm afternoon at Renaud's. "Some hedges make it impossible for drivers to
see anyone on the sidewalk when they pull out of their driveways. You can't see them and they can't see
you. There's no way you can achieve ‘escape velocity' when a car suddenly appears."

As long as we're talking about public sidewalks, what about those trash/recycling/green-waste cans?
This morning, I hauled one filled with brush and bamboo and a blue recycling bin off the sideway, left
there, no doubt, by the homeowner in indifferent haste. Sometimes they're empty, meaning that an in-
a-hurry MarBorg guy dumped the load and ignored the company policy laid out for me by Tito
Escarcega, supervisor: "We hammer the guys: do not leave the cans near mailboxes, near driveways, or
on sidewalks. But I'd be lying if I said that a few of our guys don't slip up once in a while." I know these
guys are generally on top of it and do awesome, back-breaking work, but there are a few slouches who
need to appreciate the bigger picture.

If you're in a wheelchair and there's no way around an obstacle, many times the alternative is a detour
down a sloping driveway and out into the street. Bonnie recounted a recent incident near Cottage
Hospital where she was almost hit, the driver slamming on the brakes just in time.

While I'm at it, what about sprinklers that go out of whack, showering passing pedestrians (and
hydrophobic cocker spaniels)? It's bad enough all that water is missing its target and flows to the gutter,
but no one should need a snorkel to take their exercise stroll.

Am I getting through? I love gardens. I make my living designing, teaching, writing, and ranting about
them. But your right to grow a garden ends at your property line. Any time you buy a
plant you intend to grow near public walkways or streets comes with a duty to know its potential size
and either give it plenty of room to do its thing, or be conscious and considerate enough to keep it the
hell out of everyone's way. If that means giving up a few hours on the weekend, or increasing your
gardener's hours, bite the bullet.

If you're as fed up as I am with this stuff, do as I do and rat out your neighbor. I don't start by calling
out the big guns. In the case of the errant rose bush, I left a note on their door (including my phone
number - I'm straight up about it) and the next day I got an apologetic phone call and the rose was
pruned. Encroachments into public right of way can be reported to the Zoning Division for the City of
Santa Barbara (in person at 620 Garden Street or by calling 805.897.2676), and I'm guessing that other
agencies have similar policies.

But I'm making one exception. On the 400 block of East Islay Street is a magnificent specimen of
Australian Tea Tree (Leptospermum laevigatum) slithering across the sidewalk in all its muscular glory.
There's no way around it, so the thoughtful owners have constructed a stairway leading down to the
street so neighbors can get around. I'm cool with that.

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Here's what Amy Stewart, New York Times best-selling author of Wicked Plants has to say: "Billy
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